


After Hours

by betts



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bouncer Bellamy Blake, Drunk Sex, F/M, First Dates, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Meet-Ugly, Past Clarke Griffin/Lexa, Semi-Public Sex, desecrating a cemetery, frank discussions of love and loss, really a very good night, the righteous thrill of making boys blush, totally reasonable expectations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-21 00:26:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17032791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/pseuds/betts
Summary: An epic twelve-hour first date that begins with a rescue mission and ends with pancakes.





	After Hours

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: Bell has to save Clarke from a date gone wrong. H/C maybe?
> 
> Based on a true story of the time I got rescued from a very bad date by a dude I now remember only as the Bouncer, and the long and strange night that followed.

 

* * *

 

Finn seemed great on paper — a mechanical engineer with a graduate degree, no kids, one dog. He had messaged Clarke with a question that proved he’d read her dating profile. She had asked for intros to include current reading material, and he said he was reading Infinite Jest, which, maybe that should have been the first red flag. Now, though. Now she sees she had misjudged him.

“The prequels are worthless,” he says, “absolutely fucking worthless.”

They’re having dinner at a sports bar south of town. The back patio is packed with people; of course the place had been Finn's idea. Clarke had recommended a small Thai restaurant by the university. It’s early summer and Clarke’s classes have just finished up. Lexa broke up with her during midterms. They’d been together since high school, decided to go to the same college so they wouldn’t have to break up, and without any prompting, any lead-up, any discussion, Lexa just...dumped her, under the guise that she “just doesn’t see where this is going.”

“Marriage,” Clarke had said. “Kids. Jobs. A house. All the things normal people have.”

She should have known it was the wrong thing to say. “I don’t want any of that.”

It took until finals week for Clarke to crack under the stress of loneliness and make a dating profile. She’s been in a relationship her entire adult life, has no idea how any of this works, only wants some kind of distraction from the ache of Lexa’s absence, be it a fling or friends with benefits or cuddle buddies, whatever. She needs human touch. She thought it would be easy. Lexa had been easy. They’d known each other since middle school, were best friends, each with a crush on the other, each thinking the other didn’t reciprocate, until they finally got their shit together sophomore year. Online dating is a different beast. Clarke has only been on the site for eight days and counting, and it already feels like a full-time job. She got utterly _bombarded_ with messages, nearly all men despite having her profile set to bi, and at first tried her best to reply to all of them, scope them out, have a conversation, and found quickly that wasn’t possible. She started only replying to the most interesting ones, and then the most interesting and attractive ones with the highest match percentage, and then, from those, only the ones who could hold a decent conversation and didn't outright hit on her. And, after all that funneling, she has the list of potentials whittled down to two: the Engineer, Finn, and the Bouncer, whose name she doesn’t yet know. In the end, she found the process not unlike buying a car.

They’re waiting on their food. She ordered a sandwich, he ordered wings. Another red flag. What kind of psychopath orders wings on a first date? She doesn’t want to have to go back through the funneling process again; it had ended in a number of men calling her a bitch, cunt, et cetera when she said no, so she started ignoring message threads entirely the second she got bored, and that ended in bitch, cunt, et cetera as well. She imagines when she tells the Engineer she’s not interested in seeing him again, it’ll be more of the same. She’s really coming to see man’s true colors through this endeavor, and they are not pretty.

The Engineer had wooed her with vaguely flirty discussion involving books and movies, long and thoughtful messages about politics and philosophy. His profile said he was looking for someone to challenge him intellectually. She laughed at that; only people who aren't as smart as they think they are say shit like that. People with real intelligence aren’t self-conscious about it and don’t harp on it. She was tempted to tell him about her 140 IQ, that she had the option to graduate high school early and didn’t take it (because Lexa), that she has three majors (biology, criminal justice, and creative writing), and that she reads over a hundred books a year. She decided not to; if he’s interested in knowing her, he’ll ask and she’ll tell him.

Based on the conversation so far, he is not interested in knowing her. 

“The _prequels,”_ she says pointedly, “are my favorites.”

He looks at her in disgust. “Are you fucking serious? What’s wrong with you? They _ruined_ the franchise.”

She’d mistakenly brought up Star Wars as a conversation point, having glanced at his profile once more before he arrived to pick her up (ten minutes late, not even offering an excuse) and come up with a list of topics. They had both listed Star Wars in their interests, so she figured they had that in common.

He goes off on a tangent that parrots every boring white boy perspective of Star Wars she’s ever heard, with nothing new or interesting to add. She can’t get a word in at all, even to correct him when he says something about an army of Sith, when in fact the rule of the Sith states there can only ever be two: master and apprentice. Apprentice kills master. It’s a very flawed system. Finally their food arrives, and Clarke takes the lapse in conversation to shoot back her own explanations: the prequels are creatively daring and misunderstood, visually appealing with engaging characters and greater insight into the inner workings of a vast world that the original trilogy could barely touch on because George Lucas was too busy playing with Jim Henson puppets.

“Return of the Jedi is overrated," she says. "Nothing happens. It’s just Ewoks and some bullshit and then Vader dies. Boom, that’s it. Waste of two hours.”

He looks at her like she just said she didn't like dogs. Then he says, “Hayden Christensen is a bad actor,” and, well, Clarke has words about that.

“Hayden Christensen is a _fantastic_ actor, he was given a bad script with a shitty director and turned it into a compelling, empathetic, emotionally resonant performance. Blaming Lucas’ mediocrity on the actors is short-sighted and immature.”

“Lucas is _not_ mediocre.”

“He is the _definition_ of mediocrity. You know what Star Wars was called at first? Journal of the Whills. Can you imagine that? Just imagine it for one second. Journal. Of. The. _Whills._ The reason you don’t like the prequels is because Marcia Lucas, his _wife,_ stopped editing them. She took his garbage reels and turned them into narrative gold. George Lucas didn’t give you Star Wars. Marcia Lucas did.”

Just when Finn goes to open his mouth again, the server returns to their table and asks with a strained smile, “How is everything?”

That’s when Clarke realizes the entire patio is staring at them, and their voices had been raised way, way too high.

“Fine, thank you,” Clarke says.

The server leaves, and Finn picks up one of his wings, tears into it. She watches in horror as buffalo sauce gets all over his mouth and fingers, utterly shameless about it. When he starts sucking his fingers, like down to the second knuckle, is when she decides she has seen too much. She reaches into her purse and picks up her phone. The Bouncer texted.

_So what are you up to tonight?_

“So let me ask you this, then —” Finn starts.

“Excuse me,” she interrupts. “I have to use the restroom.”

She weaves through the busy bar and gets to the bathroom. If Finn hadn’t picked her up, she could just sneak out and leave him with the bill. She locks herself in a stall and replies, _On a date,_ with the slanty-face emoji.

 _Uh oh,_ he says. _Not going well?_

She started talking to the Bouncer the night she made her profile. He was one of the first to message her. His answer to her question was, _Only rich people have the time and mental faculties to read. The rest of us just watch porn on our phones._ She replied, _What was the last book you read then?_ He said, _Iliad._

 _In high school?_ she asked.

_No lol. New translation by Caroline Alexander._

_Which means you’ve read an old translation._

_As many as I can get my hands on._

_It sounds like you don’t just watch porn on your phone._

_I can multitask._

It’s amazing, she thinks, how quickly she started channeling her daily petty thoughts to him, her stress over finals, her ridiculous professors, her mom’s insanely high expectations of her and subsequent, inevitable disappointment. And when they’re not talking, she’s crafting what she wants to say to him. She talks to him in her head. They built a quick rapport; by day three, she told him her data was out and they switched from the dating app to texting. It was a big risk — she’s heard from other girls that the second you move platforms, you’ll get pummeled with dick pics. The Bouncer has yet to send any picture of himself at all. His only sexual comment had been the porn one at the beginning. His profile was sparse, only his occupation (a bouncer, obviously), and a line near the end that said, _I don’t know. My sister made me do this. I don’t plan to get anything out of it._ He had one picture that was kind of fuzzy and dark, his head turned away, so she has no idea what he looks like, really, but they have a 95% match rate. Back in those early days, last Thursday, that had been enough for her. If he had messaged her even two days later, he would have slipped through the cracks. It makes her wonder how many good car deals she's missed.

She can tell he’s different because he’s the one she complains to about the other people she’s talking to. She sends him screencaps of the bitch, cunt, et cetera responses ("cunts like you never want a nice guy"), and the tacky intro messages ("Hey r u into feet?" which she got twice, verbatim, from two different accounts), and the glaringly stupid profiles of men wearing camouflage and holding up the heads of dead deer. Or worse, dudes with bicep tribal tattoos.

 _This is what you’re up against,_ she told him.

 _The bar is low,_ he said.

She’s learned a little bit about him, that he has a sister and his mom passed away a few years ago, though he keeps conversation mostly trained on her. She even told him about Lexa already, that she’s getting over a bad breakup, and she’s not sure what she’s looking for. He didn’t seem bothered by the bi thing, which was a relief considering Lexa’s less-than-understanding viewpoint. She asked him what he was looking for, and all he said was “a connection.” Whenever she thinks he's gotten bored with her, and they stop texting for a couple hours, he comes back with a question, or a meme, or wants to know her thoughts about something he thought of. She imagines he keeps a notepad document on his phone to take down thoughts as he has them, so they don't all come out at once, and he can taper them so as not to seem overeager. At night, she intentionally stops texting him mid-conversation before she goes to bed, so she has something to reply to in the morning over coffee, fearing that he wouldn’t initiate conversation otherwise. But then one night _he_ was the one who stopped texting _her,_ and it freaked her out, but she woke up the next morning to, _Sorry lol fell asleep. Good morning. How are you?_

She still doesn’t know is his name. She forgot to ask. His username had been BB7776.

 _This is my first date with a guy,_ she texts from the bathroom stall of the sports bar. _As in, ever. He won’t stop arguing with me. I think he thinks it’s foreplay. The server got mad at us for yelling at each other._

 _Yikes,_ he says.

_I don’t know what to do._

_Fake an emergency? Leave?_

_I don’t have a car._

She and Lexa had shared a car, but it had been in Lexa's name, so now Clarke has been in the market for one, and her parents offered to buy it, but not help pick it out, so she's been drowning in Autotrader magazines for weeks.  

 _You let him pick you up??_ the Bouncer asks.

_Is that bad?_

_Yes that’s bad. He could murder you._

_Anyone could murder me. Murder is super easy. Did you know you can go up to someone and just stab them? There’s nothing stopping you!_

_I take it back. He should be the one afraid of you._

It’s her turn to reply, but the ellipses rise and fall, rise and fall. She can hear a line forming outside of the bathroom stall so she forces herself to pee while she waits.

Finally, he adds, _I could come pick you up._

_What if I murder you?_

_That’s a chance I’ll have to take._

Her anxiety gets the best of her — she can _feel_ the irritation radiating from the women waiting — so she tucks her phone into her bra, finishes up, and leaves the stall to find a half dozen passive-aggressively frowning women. She washes her hands, dries them, exits the bathroom, but hovers near the door and pulls her phone back out.

The Bouncer added, _??_

 _Okay,_ she says. _I’m at Champ’s._

_He took you to that rat hole?_

_The food is good. I think. I haven’t had a chance to eat mine yet._

_Can you hold out for fifteen minutes?_

_Maybe. I might have killed him by then._

_I’m in a silver pick-up. Meet me out front?_

From her position, she can see Finn outside at the table, chowing down. He reaches over and takes one of her potato chips.

 _I have a better idea,_ she says.

 

* * *

 

As she takes her seat again, Finn asks, “What took so long?”

She looks him dead in the eye and says, “Explosive diarrhea,” then takes a big bite out of her sandwich. His face is still covered in buffalo sauce, doubly unattractive with his expression of vaguely disgusted bewilderment. Mouth full, she adds, “So tell me your thoughts on David Foster Wallace.”

He looks at her like she’s stupid. “Who?”

“Infinite Jest? You told me you were reading it.”

“Oh! You mean David _Forester_ Wallace.”

“Yes. I mean David Forester Wallace.”

“Overrated.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

“Have you read any Sebald by chance? Bernhard? Nabokov?”

“Who are they? Like, romance authors?”

“French existentialism, then? Jean-Paul Sartre? Simone de Beauvoir? Or what about Kafka?”

“I —”

“How about philosophy? Heidegger? Wittgenstein? Proust?”

“I don’t —”

“Tell me you’re at least familiar with James Baldwin. Go Tell It on the Mountain? Giovanni’s Room?”

“Jesus.” He finally picks up his napkin and wipes his face and hands the proper way. “Like no offense, but are you always such a bitch to your dates? You like making people feel dumb?”

Ah, the bitch, cunt, et cetera comes out. She looks at her watch. It only took forty-five minutes. She wonders how quickly the Bouncer will break. Still, she wants to say yes. Yes, she loves making men feel dumb. That’s one thing Lexa taught her: never make yourself lesser to fit with other people. Anyone worth knowing wants you to take the depth of your natural breath.

“You’re right,” she says kindly. She just has to stall for ten more minutes. Might as well get writing fodder out of it. “I _am_ being a bitch. Tell me what you’re into, then. Besides Star Wars.”

He shrugs sadly, like she should pity him. “I’ve been playing a lot of Overwatch. I’m ranked gold and I’m in, like, the ninetieth percentile of all Hanzo players.”

“I heard Hanzo is OP.”

“He is _not_ OP, it just takes _skill_ to play him.”

She chokes down her sandwich while Finn continues, glancing repeatedly toward the parking lot. There are so many ways this could go wrong. At least she doesn’t feel bad about making him pay. Dude lives with his parents and makes $60k a year.

A silver pick-up pulls into the lot. Her heart begins hammering in her chest, and she can no longer manage to swallow her food. Instead she takes a nervous sip of her water, wipes her mouth with her napkin, and subtly shifts her purse to her elbow. Finn has moved on to Roadhog’s recent nerf.

The truck doesn’t park, just idles by the curb. The Bouncer — or the man she hopes is the Bouncer — climbs out and keeps the engine on. Finn’s back is to him. When the Bouncer circles around the truck, she sees him, and can’t breathe.

He’s tall, thick like a good milkshake, wearing a leather jacket and aviators. His hair is black and long-ish, combed back but still messy, like he runs his hands through it a lot. He has a beard, which she wasn’t expecting. He walks with the slightest hint of unnecessary swagger, raises his aviators to his head and looks around for her. She continues staring at him, willing him to see her, hoping this guy is him. Hoping she looks enough like her profile pics — a photo from queer prom two years ago, a full-body shot in her bedroom mirror, a selfie with the Snapchat dog filter. He spots her, finally. Their eyes lock. He winks. He's the kind of guy who winks. Be still her heart. Then he hops over the little patio gate and heads toward her.

“Clarke?” he says so loudly that people look over. Her name had been part of her username. “What the _fuck_ are you doing here?”

She stands dramatically, already inching away from her chair for a quick escape. “Oh my god, what are _you_ doing here?”

“Who the fuck is this?” the Bouncer asks, pointing to Finn.

Finn does a double-take at the Bouncer, stands and puffs his chest out a bit. “Hey man, I didn’t know anything. She said she was single.”

“She’s not.” Then to Clarke, “Come on, we’re leaving.”

“But —”

“No ‘but’s, let’s go.”

She hadn’t expected Finn to try and stand up for her. “C’mon, man, stop it. Don’t talk to her like that.”

Maybe she had mis-misjudged him. Maybe she really had been a bitch. Oh well, she thinks. There are too many men in the world to sit patiently with each one, waiting for an opportunity for them to suddenly become the best versions of themselves.

“Yeah?” the Bouncer asks. “What are you gonna do about it?”

Finn pushes him. Finn actually pushes him. The Bouncer, obviously, doesn’t move, just looks down at his chest like a fly had landed on it. Then he puts one big hand on Finn’s shoulder, and shoves him back into his seat.

“We’re leaving,” he says, wraps a gentle hand around Clarke’s arm, and pulls her away. She makes a show of his roughness, tripping over her own feet, though he’s barely touching her.

“Sorry!” she shouts behind her to Finn. “It was nice meeting you, sort of!”

As soon as they’re back at the truck, the Bouncer opens the passenger door for her. She’s wearing a skirt, so he offers her a hand to help her in, which she takes. He hurries over to the driver’s side and peels out of the parking lot before his door is all the way shut.

“Oh my god,” she says. “Did you see his _face?”_

The Bouncer is smiling smugly, like he’s trying to hide how fun that was. “Sorry to manhandle you like that.”

“Anything for a good performance.”

“I’m Bellamy Blake, by the way.”

“Clarke Griffin. It’s so good to finally meet you.”

“Where are we headed?”

“What were your plans before I interrupted your night?”

“Usual Friday night rounds.”

“Then let’s do that.”

They wind up at a bar downtown called Lucky’s, a hole in the wall that’s just slightly too clean to be a dive, with a surprisingly long list of craft beer and half the kitchen menu dedicated to vegan or gluten-free items. The place is the width of a double-wide trailer. The walls are covered in neon beer logos, and a handful of pinball machines flicker near the back. They sit at the bar, the actual bar, not a table. She can count the number of times she’s sat at a bar proper on one hand and hopes it’s not glaringly obvious she has no idea what or how to order. Everyone seems to know the Bouncer — Bellamy, she corrects. A number of servers pat him on the shoulder and say hi as they pass. The bartender, a woman in a tank top with tendrils of curly brown hair falling around her face, nods at him, a gesture which says she’ll be over in a minute. He offers a wave in reply that says she can take her time.

“Are you one of those guys who’s going to judge me for not liking beer?” she asks, flipping through the draft menu, which is an actual three-ring binder, the kind you get at Office Depot.

“Are you one of those girls who tries to impress me by pretending to like stuff she doesn’t?”

“If you’re not impressed by me already, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m just an impressive person.”

“And humble, too.”

The bartender comes up to them and smiles at Bellamy, paying no mind at all to Clarke. “You’re late.”

“Had to run an errand.” He nods toward Clarke. “This is my date, Clarke. Clarke, this is my —”

“Bartender,” she says tersely. “Gina.”

“Hi,” Clarke says neutrally, even if her brain is filled with exclamation points.

“The usual?” Gina asks Bellamy.

“Yep. And, uhh.” He glances at the menu, which is a tattered pamphlet covered in Comic Sans. To Clarke, he asks, “You hungry?”

“Munchy. Can we split something?”

“Nachos?”

“Nachos.”

To Gina he says, “Nachos.”

“What ciders do you have on tap?” Clarke asks.

She’s pretty sure Gina is giving her some kind of death glare as she rattles off the cider options. Clarke is tempted to cock her head to the side and ask a thousand questions just to be annoying, but picks one at random, and Gina walks away.

“What the hell was that?” Clarke asks.

Bellamy runs a hand over his beard. It makes a soft sound like sandpaper on wood. She thinks about how rough his hand had been on her arm as he dragged her away from Finn, and what that says about him. How do the hands of someone so young get so worn?

“Gina and I had a thing.”

“You took me to the bar your ex-girlfriend works at?”

“You asked me where I was headed. This is where I was headed. I hang out here on Fridays.”

“You hang out with your ex on Fridays.”

“She works here. I work here. Can’t really avoid it.”

“You work here _and_ hang out here?”

“There are three bars in this town. I work at two of them, and the other is Champ’s. I wouldn’t be caught dead there.” He watches the soccer game on the TV above the bar. “Anyway, it’s not a big deal.”

“How long were you together?”

“Three years.”

_“What?”_

“We dated for three years _four years_ ago. We’ve been apart longer than we were together. We’re not even really friends anymore. Just coworkers. Acquaintances with history.”

“Based on the look she was giving me, you don’t normally bring dates around.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Getting into the hard questions already?”

“We could talk about the weather if you’d rather.”

He sighs. “I broke up with Gina to date Echo. Echo used to be friends with Gina. So once Echo and I started dating, she was pretty much banned from Lucky’s. Then Echo and I broke up —” He counts on his fingers. “Six months ago, and I think Gina thought she and I would get back together, but that didn’t happen.”

As much as all of this should be far brighter red flags than Infinite Jest, Bellamy has plucked at Clarke’s naturally curious nature, e.g. being a slut for gossip. “I have so many questions. I don’t know where to start.”

“I hear there’s a heat wave coming through. Supposed to get up to ninety tomorrow.”

“No no, no way. You can’t drop all these drama bombs and walk away.”

Gina comes back with their drinks, sets them down so roughly they slosh over the side of the glass.

“Okay, so,” Clarke begins once she's out of earshot. “Why did you break up with Echo?”

“Jesus,” he says, “that’s a long-ass story.”

“Ballpark it for me.”

“Fell out of love I guess? Maybe was never in love, is a better way of putting it.”

“Ooh,” she says. “Then why did you leave Gina for her?”

“Was even less in love with Gina,” he says, his eyes toward the other end of the bar, tracking her so she can’t overhear. Not that she could anyway, with the generic-sounding prog rock blaring on a speaker above their heads. “Which is why I won’t get back together with her.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

He stares at her like he’s sizing her up. “You seem like a person who pushes boundaries.”

“And you seem like a person who likes his boundaries pushed.”

He has to look away to hide his smile. She likes this false-aloof act he’s got. Coy. She’ll break him of it before the night is over.

“I don’t know,” he admits in regards to her question. “I don’t think so.”

“Well.” She lifts her glass to her lips. “I like a challenge.”

“You’re awfully bold for a girl with a broken heart.”

“I just know a good thing when I see it.”

He scoffs like he can’t believe her, ducks his head. It might be all the neon turning his skin pink, but she’s not so sure. A few moments of silence pass, and he says, avoiding her eyes, “I know some women don’t like having their appearance commented on. Are you like that?”

“Are you asking permission to compliment me?”

“Yes I am.”

“Permission granted.”

His eyes dart over to hers and he keeps her gaze this time. “You are really beautiful.”

“Thank you,” she says, resting her chin on her palm. Under the bar, their knees are touching. “You sound surprised.”

“Pictures online are hard to gauge, but you.” He drags his eyes down her body. “Wow.”

“Wow?”

He nods. "Wow.”

The nachos arrive, and Clarke must be sitting significantly closer to Bellamy than she was before, based on the way Gina nearly throws the plate at them and storms off.

“Her shift is almost over,” he says.

 

* * *

 

Bellamy stops drinking after two pints of Guinness, and Clarke is nearly done with her fifth cider when the lights come up and the bartenders start to turn the chairs over on the tables. It’s nearing one-thirty. Clarke finds it hard to believe they’ve been talking almost five hours. She feels like her voice might give out; she hasn’t divulged this much about herself in years. She hasn’t had a reason to, hasn’t made any new friends since she was a teenager. She told him what exactly had happened with Finn, which led to her well-rehearsed lecture on the appeal of the Star Wars prequels, to which Bellamy nodded politely, asked questions, and said a number of times, “I never thought of it like that.” Even though he admitted he had only seen each of the movies once, with the exception of the Phantom Menace which he hadn’t seen at all, he still followed along and matched her interest in the topic. Then she asked him about the Caroline Alexander translation of the Iliad, and his face lit up for a second before he said, “That’s boring, you don’t want to get me started.”

“Bullshit,” she said. “Tell me all about it.”

And then it was his turn to talk, and he became animated, un-self-conscious, throwing hand gestures and talking a mile a minute. She should read more Homer, she thinks, so she could have deeper conversations about it with him, the way Lexa, for years, had painstakingly kept up with Clarke’s rapid-fire attention span regardless of her own investment in the source, just so Clarke would never feel alone in her niche interests.

At one point, around ten, Clarke went to the bathroom and, disastrously tipsy, almost texted the Bouncer to tell him that Bellamy was turning out to be a really good date, before remembering that Bellamy _is_ the Bouncer, and then she got sad because she had no one to tell.

So she texted him anyway. _The Bouncer is really great!!_

_Is that what you’ve been calling me?_

_Yessir._

_Why are you texting me while you pee._

_Don’t tell me what to do._

Their new bartender, a guy named Pickles who doesn’t really speak — Gina never came by to check on them after she dropped off the nachos — brings a tented receipt over and sets it in front of Bellamy.

Bellamy reaches into his back pocket for his wallet.

“No, nope, no way,” Clarke says, kind of drunkenly. She puts her hand on his bicep to stop him, then squeezes it, frowns at its girth, and squeezes it again, before forcing herself back to the topic at hand. “I had the most. I’m getting it.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I already believe you’re a beacon of chivalry. You don’t have to prove it.”

“I’m not trying to prove anything.”

When she tries — and maybe fails — to menacingly stare him down, he says, “You can get the next one.”

Her face has been flushed pink for over an hour now. She can feel the burn on her cheeks and the tips of her ears. “When will the next one be?”

“When do you want?”

“Right now.”

“Now? At two in the morning?”

“I thought you were a night owl.”

“We could go to the other bar.”

“Champ’s?”

“The other-other bar. The one I work at.”

She nods. “Yes. That is what I want to do. And that’s the tab I shall pick up.”

“Alright,” he says. “But it’s going to cost more than this one.”

“Why?”

“After hours. You tip time and a half, plus the tip-out to the bouncer, so like, forty percent minimum, or they won’t let you back in.”

“Not a problem. I’m loaded.”

He picks through his wallet and throws a couple bills on the check. “Is that so?”

“Silver spoon, trust fund.” She makes a hand gesture in the air that means _and so forth._  “My dad works for a software company and my mom is a doctor.”

“Smart, beautiful, confident, and rich.” He slides off his barstool and holds a hand out to help her off of hers. “What’s a girl like you doing with a guy like me?”

She gets to her feet, a little wobbly, and sidles up close to him, her hand on his chest. “Having a very, very lovely evening.”

 

* * *

 

She takes his hand in hers as they walk back to the truck. The night is cool, bordering on cold, and she’s only in a sundress and sandals. A train whistles in the distance; its wheels clack against the tracks. The parking lot is empty save for a couple cars in the back. Bellamy’s truck is tucked in a patch of darkness between street lights. She goes to reach for the handle, but he stops her, takes her hand and twirls her back around.

“I was going to wait,” he says, stepping closer, “but I don’t think I can anymore.” He tilts her chin up and asks, “Can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” she says, but her heart is in her throat, and she’s suddenly feeling very sober.

He leans in, brushes his lips against hers. She ropes her arms around his neck; his hand spans the small of her back, the other threaded into her hair. It starts light, easy, testing the waters. For all her confidence, she hopes it’s not obvious he’s only the third person she’s ever kissed, and the first man. Lexa was her first and last everything, and occasionally they invited their friend Niylah into bed with them.

Bellamy’s mouth is just so _big._ He leads the whole thing, nearly devours her. She’s never felt so small, and finds it’s not a bad thing at all, knowing he could pick her up if he wanted, toss her over his shoulder. Overpower her like a romance novel, a bodice ripper. But he doesn’t seem the bodice-ripping type, unless she asked, maybe. She might be afraid if it were anybody else, but he’s been so polite, and she honestly believes that if she had said no to him just now he would have backed off. It thrills her though, that he could. He could, yet he won’t.

His mouth is warm and soft, his body hard. His leather jacket digs into her arms, and she finds her hands wandering to his hair, thick and wiry between her fingers. She told herself earlier tonight as she was getting ready that she wasn’t looking to fuck anyone yet, not on a first date, but she’s already rethinking it. She could just dive right in. It’d be so easy, with someone like Bellamy.

She realizes she doesn’t have an exit strategy for this kiss; she’s never really needed one. When you’re in a relationship long enough, you get attuned to each other. You know when to stop. But she doesn’t know Bellamy yet, doesn’t know if she should be the first to pull away. She’s enjoying it, the sweep of his tongue against hers, the way he has her pressed against the passenger door of the truck, his teeth sinking into her lower lip. She imagines if she lets this continue, she’ll go home with hickeys all over. She bruises easily, and he seems very bitey.

He finally lets her go, catches his breath while resting his forehead against hers. His hands are placed in a gentlemanly fashion on her waist. It was a good kiss, she thinks now that it’s over. No, a great one. And she wants to do it again.

“Okay,” he says. His voice is deeper than it was a moment ago. “We can go now.”

 

* * *

 

A guy in a beanie is standing outside the front door of a bar that has no sign on it. Bellamy tells her it’s called Flannigan’s. All the bars in this town are possessive. Were it not for the lights inside and the neon fighting Irishman dancing in the window, she would think it was abandoned. The parking lot is cracked and uneven. Lucky’s seemed like a five-star restaurant in comparison.

Beanie guy and Bellamy do the half-handshake, half-hug thing that dudes do.

“Was wondering when you’d show up,” Beanie says.

“It’s my day off.”

“It’s never your day off.”

To Clarke, Bellamy says, “This is Miller. Miller, this is my date, Clarke.”

Miller shakes her hand. His is way softer than Bellamy's, his grip lighter. 

She asks, “Did you date him too?”

“I wish,” Miller says, and then to Bellamy, “So she met Gina.” Then, in explanation, "Pickles texted me."

“This town’s too goddamn small,” Bellamy says.

“Says the guy who fucks all the women in it.”

Bellamy gives him a warning look, then shoots an apologetic one to Clarke. “He’s kidding.”

Miller gives her a little head shake and a wide-eyed expression that says, _I’m really not._

Bellamy takes her hand and drags her toward the door, presumably before Miller can talk more shit about him. “Let me know if you need any help out here, okay,” he calls behind him.

The bar is surprisingly busy for having almost no cars in the lot, about a dozen people split down the middle by generation, Millennials and Baby Boomers, half the tables taken up by people who look like they work at tattoo shops and consignment stores, all sleeve tattoos and beards and gauges, leather and denim; and old white men in pastel polos staring up at the giant boxy TV strung in a corner. The picture is fuzzy, but it looks like a sport of some kind. Strange Celtic-sounding rock is playing on the jukebox. Bellamy takes a seat at the bar again. The bartender, a thin brunette in a high ponytail, doesn’t look up at them, keeps her eyes trained on her phone while her thumbs rove rapidly over it. Clarke thinks it’s unprofessional for a whole second before remembering the bar is technically closed.

The bartender looks up and spots them as she slides her phone into her back pocket. Her smile is wide and white, and she limps over to where they’re seated.

“Miller texted me,” she says. “Hi Clarke. I’m Raven, and yes, I too have fucked Bellamy Blake.”

“Jesus," Clarke says to Bellamy, "who _haven’t_ you fucked?”

“Once,” Bellamy says, exasperated. “It was one time, eight years ago.”

“But what a time it was,” Raven says. Then to Clarke, “What can I get for you?”

“Do you have cider?”

“Nope.”

Clarke glances at the taps. Budweiser, Miller Lite, Yuengling, Guinness. None of them sound appealing. “Can you do a mixed drink?”

“Anything your mind can devise.”

“I’ve only been able to drink for like, a year, so I don’t really know what I like.”

Raven raises her eyebrows at Bellamy. “Robbing the cradle much?”

“Give me a break. I’m twenty-six.”

To Clarke, she adds, “I’ll surprise you,” and to Bellamy, “A Guinness for the old man.”

“We’re the same age,” he says, but she’s already walking away, ponytail swishing.

“I’m really sorry about them,” Bellamy says.

“I think it’s funny.”

“You don’t think I’m a womanizing manwhore?”

“Well. A little bit, yeah.”

He runs a hand over his face. She pats his back. “But you seem like a really nice womanizing manwhore.”

Two obviously drunk and/or high guys come up to the bar and jostle Bellamy’s shoulders. One has a shaved head. The other has black hair swept to the side like it’s 2007.

“The man,” shaved-head guy says. “The man is _here.”_

Bellamy sighs deeply. “Clarke, this is Jasper and Monty.”

“A girl!” the emo-looking one, Monty, says. “You’ve brought a girl home to meet the family.”

“Do you work here too?” Clarke asks.

“No,” Jasper says. “We live here.” Monty points to the ceiling.

“Did we know Bellamy was going to be here tonight?” Monty says conspiratorially to Jasper.

“That is a thing we did not know,” Jasper says.

“So we have to hide the cargo.”

“Yes. Yes, we must hide the cargo.”

Bellamy pauses, assesses both of them. “She’s here, isn’t she.”

“We don’t know what you’re talking about,” Monty replies.

Bellamy stares them down for a long and tense moment, and even Clarke gets a little freaked out by the intensity of it. Jasper is the first to cave. “She’s been here all night, at least. We’ve kept an eye on her.” He points two fingers at his own eyes and then spins them around to Bellamy’s.

“How much money?” Bellamy demands.

“The ante was only twenty-five tonight,” Monty says.

“How much?” Bellamy says, a little louder, and the table of Baby Boomers glances over.

“We weren’t keeping track,” Jasper says. “We were too busy losing.”

“I think she came out ahead,” Monty adds.

Clarke thinks this night is turning out more and more like the Alice in Wonderland. Before she can even ask who they’re talking about — Echo, maybe? — Bellamy is already climbing off the stool and launching himself over the bar. He slips past Raven, who is mixing Clarke’s drink and doesn’t seem at all disturbed by the goings-on, and storms into what looks like a back room.

“Where did he go?” Clarke asks.

“Hopefully not to get a weapon,” Monty says.

Raven returns with their drinks and sets them on two cocktail napkins. Clarke's is a short red and yellow drink with three maraschino cherries on a sword-shaped toothpick.

“Show’s about to start," Raven says, and settles with her back against the bar, watching, like the rest of them, the door to the back room.

A moment later, Bellamy returns, the arm of a young girl in his grip, who looks very angry and isn’t wearing much at all in terms of attire, just a crop top that barely covers her breasts and cutoff shorts. Her hair is long and black and straight, and she has just as many freckles as Bellamy.

“Did you let her in here?” Bellamy asks Raven.

“I don’t have any control over who Jasper and Monty let into the back.”

“I grew _up_ here,” the girl says, yanking her arm out of Bellamy’s grip.

“You’re seventeen. You can’t be playing poker at bars with money you don’t even fucking have.”

“You do it.”

“I’m an _adult,_ and I work here.”

“You don’t tonight.”

“I’m on a date.”

Clarke innocently plucks a cherry off her toothpick with her teeth. The girl glances around the bar and, spotting Clarke, stops. “Her?” she asks, pointing, as if Clarke can’t see or hear her. “That’s the girl you’ve been talking to?”

“Yes.”

“She doesn’t seem like your type.”

“I don’t have a type.”

“You like women who yell at you. She doesn’t seem very yell-y.”

“Are you drunk?”

“No.”

“High?”

She pauses. “A little.”

Bellamy looks over her shoulder to glare at Monty and Jasper. “You two are taking her home. Now.”

“No can do, friendo,” Jasper says, hands lifted apologetically. “We are not fit to operate a motor vehicle.”

“Fine,” Bellamy says, and to the girl, “You’re coming with me.”

“But _Dad,”_ she says.

“Shut up.”

She follows him around the bar, the proper way this time, lifting the little horizontal door at the far end. He stops when he reaches Clarke and says, “I’ll be right back,” then marches out the front door.

The girl calls behind her, “I hope we’ll get a proper introduction soon you seem really nice bye!”

Clarke, Jasper, and Monty all clamber to follow. They watch out the narrow window slat of the door as Bellamy asks Miller to take the girl home. When Bellamy comes back, the three of them step all over each other to make way.

“I’m sorry Clarke,” Bellamy says. “I have to stand in for Miller for a few minutes.”

“Can I stay with you?” she asks.

“You really want to?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“We’ll come too,” Monty says.

“No you fucking won't,” Bellamy replies.

 

* * *

 

“So this is what you do all night?” she asks. She’s sitting on a stool under a tattered awning. Bellamy is leaning against a rail, arms over his chest, looking like a beefy burrito. It’s only been about ten minutes. In that time Bellamy explained that the girl is his little sister Octavia, and she has a troubling albeit lucrative gambling addiction. He said he used to bring her here when she was a kid, before Monty and Jasper moved in, and the upstairs apartment was occupied by a hair stylist named Luna who adored Octavia and didn’t mind taking care of her while Bellamy worked. But she moved to New York, and now they have Monty and Jasper, who are spectacularly bad at poker but have developed something of an infamous underground gambling ring in town.

“Pretty much,” he says. “It’s busier earlier on. Only certain people can come for after hours, and they’re only on Fridays. Miller and I rotate.”

Clarke curls around herself when a breeze hits, crosses her legs tightly, tries not to shiver.

“Are you cold?” he asks, already shrugging off his jacket.

“I’m okay.”

He drapes it over her shoulders. “Here, take it.”

She does, because who in their right mind would pass up an opportunity to wear a big comfy leather jacket? Not this girl. She shoves her arms through and balls the too-long sleeves in her fists. She and Lexa were always the same size. They didn’t quite share a wardrobe because they had different styles, but they borrowed each other’s things as necessary, all except bras and shoes — Lexa’s bras were too small for her, and her shoes too big.

Clarke is still feeling tipsy from her earlier ciders, deeply relaxed and now warm. She wants to ask Bellamy to kiss her again, but she’s not sure he can since he’s bouncing right now, even though they’re completely alone. Flannigan's is at an empty crossroads, part of a cluster of shops and restaurants, a gas station with the old-style pumps, the ones that don’t take credit cards. A true small-town watering hole.

“I’m sorry about all this,” he says. “I swear I’m not a hardass womanizing manwhore. These guys are just assholes. I should’ve known better than to take you on my actual rounds.”

“I’m having a blast. Your life is like a reality show.”

“Believe me, I wish it wasn’t.”

“I spend all my waking hours doing homework and volunteering at the hospital. Before Lexa and I broke up, it was like, my idea of fun involved family game night. Going to the grocery on Monday instead of Sunday felt like the world was ending. We had a routine down to the minute.” She takes his silence as an invitation to continue, even though it should be a taboo topic, exes. Then again, she reasons, he took her to a bar where his ex works. Everything is on the table now. “I think that’s why she broke up with me. We had that kind of chemistry, you know. Locking each other down. We were all about comfort and ease, because everything else in our lives was so hard. School and family and the wide unknown future. It should have been something we appreciated, but I’m not really a comfortable, easy kind of person. And neither is she. It’s a shame we couldn’t break each other out of it.”

“Sounds like you might get back together someday.”

“I wouldn’t be opposed to that. I still love her. But it’s good, you know, to get some space. Some time apart. Or maybe we’ll grow so far apart we won’t want to come back to each other.” She pauses, shifts on the stool. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“Admitting I still love my ex.”

“I still love Echo, in a way. Gina in another. Octavia takes up most of my heart, and that freaks girls out sometimes. Doesn’t mean I can’t love somebody else.”

“I’m not freaked out.”

“You know,” he begins, looking down and scuffing his boot across the asphalt. “I’d die to have what you and Lexa had. Comfort. Routine. Trust.”

“You didn’t have that with Echo or Gina?”

“It always felt like, I don’t know, they were one step further away than they should have been. Good friends I had sex with, like we were performing what we thought a relationship should look like. Echo, anyway. Gina was crazy about me, and I was just young and stupid enough to think I was in love with her, when I only loved how much she loved me.”

“So what does ‘a connection’ really mean then?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’ll know it when I see it.”

“Come on. Try.”

He seems to mull it over. “Someone I’m excited to hang out with. Someone I want to be my best self for. Someone who —” He looks off to the side, like he did before when she made him blush. “Pushes my boundaries a bit, I guess.”

She lets the silence linger, traces the line of his profile with her eyes, backlit by the fighting Irishman. His biceps strain his shirt sleeves. A wave of desire comes over her, a familiar one, but one she’d always attributed to Lexa. It’s strange, feeling it for someone new. She hadn’t anticipated that, wanting someone again so soon. She went into this craving to be touched, indiscriminate, however she could make it work, but now she’s zeroed in on this man, this bouncer who fucks as he pleases and lives his whole life at night, with a teenage gambling sister and a made family of bar rats. She could love him, she thinks. She could love him in a way she didn’t think she’d be able to again.

“I really like you,” she says.

He ducks his head, like he always seems to when he smiles. Like it’s a shameful thing, to be happy. “I really like you too.”

She reaches out for his hand, entwines their fingers together.

“So,” she says, “what’s the most exciting thing you’ve ever done as a bouncer?”

He nods toward the highway. “See that fence over there?”

She looks over. A tall chain-link fence separates the parking lot from the highway, with a wide span of grass between them and a sloping hill.

“Dude was hiding in the women’s bathroom,” he says, “so I dragged him out and threw him over the fence.”

“You didn’t.”

“He almost rolled into traffic.”

“What was he doing in the bathroom?”

“Waiting for a woman to come in alone, I’m guessing. Total creep. I’d thrown him out once before for grabbing Raven’s ass.”

“Doesn’t anyone ever call the cops around here?”

“Not usually. Not for fists. Guy pulls a gun or knife or something, or if someone gets really hurt, then yeah. Otherwise we don’t really like cops around here. Illegal gambling. Lot of drugs passing a lot of hands.”

“Do you do drugs?”

“Used to.”

“Like what?”

He shrugs. “Coke and molly, mostly. LSD, shrooms. Heroin, once.”

“You’ve done _heroin?”_

“Just the once, and never again. I hated it. All of it, that whole lifestyle. Now I barely even drink.”

“It sounds like you’ve lived a hundred lives already.”

“Feels like it, too.” He squeezes her hand. “You’re really not freaked out? By all the fucking and fighting and drugs, I mean.”

“I think I could write a dozen novels about you and still not scratch the surface of who you are.”

“I can’t tell if that’s a compliment.”

“I can’t either.”

Miller returns shortly after. Inside, their drinks are still waiting for them, Clarke’s a little melted and Bellamy’s beer gone flat. The clock says it’s nearing three in the morning, almost four hours past her usual bedtime, but she’s not tired, high on the aura of anarchy Bellamy gives off. She’s still wearing his jacket, even though the bar is toasty. They continue talking between longer and more comfortable bouts of silence. Bellamy finishes his beer and orders another. His hand rests on her knee under the table.

When Raven returns with his beer, she stays to chat, ask Clarke about her life. It’s an easy conversation, until Bellamy’s hand slides slowly up Clarke’s bare thigh, then back down, over and over, higher and higher. Clarke shifts, spreads her legs a little, and on the next pass, his hand settles firmly between her legs, side of his pinky sliding up and down the crotch of her now-sodden underwear. She attempts valiantly to pay attention to the story Raven is telling about their asshole of a boss, Kane, and how he has no idea how the bar actually operates, and if it weren’t for Raven, Bellamy, Miller, and the rest of the crew, the place would crumble in a day. Bellamy adds easily to the conversation, explains this and that about the inner-workings of Flannigan's, like his hand isn't grinding against Clarke's clit. Finally, a Baby Boomer calls Raven over to close out his tab, and Raven walks away.

Bellamy leans over and asks, “Want to go out for a smoke?”

“You smoke?” 

“No," he says, amused. 

She nods, and when she slides off the barstool, she feels slick between her legs, and her knees are weak. The drink was stronger than she gave credit for; her head is swimmy. This time he navigates her through the back, around mop buckets and a busing station, and through an exit that says an alarm will sound if opened. No alarm sounds when Bellamy pushes through it. Outside is a narrow alleyway between Flannigan’s and the building next door, an Indian restaurant she thinks, based on the smell of coriander in the air. Bellamy presses her against the brick wall and kisses her.

“Can I touch you again?” he says against her lips.

“Please.”

He settles his hand between her legs and roughly rubs her underwear around her clit. After a few passes, he slips her panties to the side and slicks his finger up, slides it in.

She was right: he’s very bitey, can’t stop nipping at her throat, sucking kisses onto her skin.

“Can I eat you out?” he asks.

“Here? Right now?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know how that would —”

He slips his finger out and sinks to his knees, bunches her skirt in his fists, and looks up waiting for an answer. His eyes are dark; her fingers card through his hair. She’s never felt so wanted by anyone, has never felt this much desire for anyone in turn, at least not after only knowing them a few hours. Maybe this is the passion that was missing for them, the wildness lurking in both their hearts. She could say no, not right now, it’s too soon. Let’s take it slow.

She could. But she doesn’t.

“Yeah,” she says, nodding. She grips his hair in her fist. He lifts her leg and hooks it over his shoulder, drags her underwear to the side again and slots his mouth on her cunt.

“What if someone catches us?” she asks.

He lifts off only to say, “Then I’ll go work at Champ’s,” and returns to what he was doing. His tongue is pleasantly dexterous. Clarke wants to close her eyes but can only stare out the end of the alleyway toward the road, watching for passers by. That thought — coupled with the two fingers he presses inside her — brings her dangerously close to coming. She rocks her hips over his mouth, balance held entirely by the wall behind her and his other hand on her hip. Her back strains uncomfortably from the angle, but it’s a good discomfort, reminds her of Lexa’s bondage phase and the way she contorted Clarke’s body into all sorts of positions with colorful silk ropes. The inability to move, the restraint and utter helplessness — that’s how she feels around Bellamy, no rope needed. Safe and small and taken care of. She wishes she could tell him that, but it feels too soon.

“Bellamy,” she says, breath heaving. He moans at the sound of his name in her mouth. “Bellamy, I’m —”

He fucks her faster and harder with his fingers, circles his tongue around her clit with just the right pressure. A car drives by going fifty miles an hour; too fast and too dark to see them, but the threat of it pushes her over. She bites the inside of her cheek when she comes to keep from crying out, from getting Miller’s or whoever-else’s attention. Her hips shudder over his mouth as he slows to stillness. Finally he lets her go, wipes his lips with the back of his hand, catches his breath for a beat before standing back up. He kisses her again. She reaches for his cock, unsure what she’s doing, other than groping the hard bulge at his fly, but he doesn’t seem nearly as interested in her hand as he is making her taste herself on his tongue.

“You might be perfect,” he says.

“Yeah,” she breathes, clutching desperately to his shirt, legs threatening to give out underneath her. “You might be, too.”

 

* * *

 

Flannigan’s closes up at four. The Baby Boomers are all gone, Monty and Jasper went back up to their apartment, and the Millennials are loitering outside with Miller. Clarke and Bellamy stay with Raven to clean up. Clarke lifts the chairs onto the table. Bellamy puts the glasses away. The lights are up, TV off, and the jukebox has fallen silent.

Outside, when the bar is all locked up, Raven hugs Clarke goodbye and says it was good meeting her and she'll add her on Facebook in the morning.

“We give him shit, but he’s a catch, I swear,” Raven says.

“I believe it,” Clarke says.

Raven leans in and adds quietly, "And a great lay."

In the truck, Bellamy keys on the ignition, and Clarke asks, “Where to next?”

“You don’t want to go home?”

“Not if you don’t.”

“The breakfast places don’t open until six.”

“So we have a couple hours.” She thinks on it for all of five seconds, knowing if she doubts herself at all, she won’t say it. So she blurts out, “Let’s have sex.”

He stares at her. “You’re kidding.”

“I do not kid about such matters.”

“I don’t have a condom.”

Condoms. Right. Penis-havers need those.

“We’ll buy some,” she says.

“We can’t go to my apartment. Octavia is there.”

“And I live with my parents.” She pauses, glances around the cab of the truck, which is spacious, she thinks, for a truck. “We’ll do it here.”

“Here.”

“In your truck. We’ll park it somewhere no one will see.”

He looks at her in awe. “Okay,” he says, like he can't believe this is happening. He shifts the truck into gear. “Condom run it is.”

They run into a twenty-four-hour convenience store on the other side of town. Bellamy goes and picks out the condoms while Clarke pillages the coolers. She grabs three different flavors of Gatorade. On her way to the cash register, she gets a bag of Sour Patch Kids, a Snickers bar, and a Kit-Kat bar. She dumps it all on the counter next to the box of condoms. The cashier is a tired, apathetic-looking guy who can’t be any older than Clarke. He reminds her of Finn.

“We’re having sex,” Bellamy says to her, “not sneaking into a movie.”

The cashier looks back and forth between them.

“Listen,” Clarke replies, “you fuck it all out, then you replenish your electrolytes and boost your blood sugar. People used to smoke after sex. But now humans are smarter, wiser, more evolved. We fuck, and we drink Gatorade.” To the cashier: “Tell him.”

“She’s right,” the cashier says.

Bellamy sighs and pulls out his wallet.

 

* * *

 

They drive around for a while looking for a good place to fuck. “There?” Bellamy asks, nodding to a strip mall parking lot.

“Too open,” Clarke says.

Bellamy points to an empty gravel lot behind a cat cafe. "There?"

They’re moving at a crawl since there are no other cars on the road. Her skin has started to vibrate, and she thinks if he doesn't get inside her soon, she's going to implode.

“Not aesthetic enough.”

“Aesthetic?”

“I want it to be pretty.”

“We’re going to be fucking in a Chevy four-by-four. I don’t know what kind of aesthetic you’re expecting.”

“There,” she says, pointing to the cemetery coming up on their right.

“You want to fuck in a cemetery.”

“No, I want to fuck in a truck parked in a cemetery.”

Despite his apparent hesitations, Bellamy pulls in, drives as far back as the path goes, until the only light is coming from the half-moon and the airport a mile away.

“How do we do this?” Clarke asks.

“I don’t know. I’ve never had sex in my truck.”

“Well, I’ve only ever had sex in a bed, and never with someone who had a dick. So we’re going to have to improvise.”

“Wait wait, you’ve never had sex with a dude?”

“I’ve been in a relationship with a woman since I was fourteen. Of course I haven’t had sex with a dude.” His silence is troubling. “Is that a problem?”

“No. No problem. So was I…”

“The first guy I’ve ever kissed? Yes.”

“This is a lot of responsibility. I have an entire gender to represent.”

“The Engineer was your only competition, so you’re doing great by comparison.”

“But you’ve...you know.”

“Strap-ons, dildos, yes I’ve had penetrative sex. It’s not a big deal.”

“Okay, if you’re sure.” He takes off his seat belt. “How do you feel about being on top?”

“I feel good about it.” She reaches under her skirt and pulls her underwear down, slips them off and tucks them in Bellamy’s jacket pocket. She climbs over his lap with no small amount of difficulty and settles on his thighs.

“Comfortable?” he asks.

“Very.”

He pulls her down by the back of the neck and kisses her. For boning in the cab of a truck parked in a cemetery at four in the morning, he’s unnecessarily gentle. He tugs her dress down and tucks the cups of her bra under her breasts, laves at her nipples. So many hickeys, she thinks. Her parents are going to throw a fit. When she went to the bathroom at Flannigan’s before they left, a purple spot had already bloomed on her lower lip, red splotches at her collarbone. She slips the jacket off and tosses it on the passenger side, lowers the straps of her dress off her arms and takes her whole bra off, so she's naked except for her dress pooled at her hips.

He reaches between them. She can hear the clatter of a belt buckle, the pulling-down of a zipper.

“Can I touch you?” she asks. Since she’s the one on top, she figures it’s only fair.

He nods, and she palms the hard length of him over his boxers.

“Wow,” she says.

“Wow?”

She nods. "Wow.”

She can’t see his expression, but she’s sure it’s one of smugness.

She finds the slit of his boxers and settles her fingers inside, traces him from bottom to top. An hour and a half until breakfast; they can take their time. He lifts his hips up, taking her with him, and pulls his pants and boxers down to his thighs. Now all of him can fit into her hand without clothes getting in the way.

“Show me?” she asks.

He wraps his hand around hers and brings it up and back down again, long slow strokes that drag the skin above the head. She’s surprised the ways sex toys get it right and wrong. The texture of silicone is right; cold sturdiness wrong. You could break someone's car window with a good dildo, but his cock feels like a fragile thing.

“Like this?”

“Yeah,” he breathes, his forehead tucked into her neck.

She gets herself worked up by working him up, soon replaces her hand with grinding on top of him. His fingers dig into her hips, and with each movement the threat of him slipping inside her becomes more imminent.

He gently taps her thigh, and she lifts off of him. He already has the condom packet in hand, rips it open. She watches as he rolls it on himself, fascinated by the acrid sting of latex and lubricant that fills the cab. When he’s done, she settles back on him, his cock suddenly cold but warming quickly.

“Whenever you want,” he whispers, like someone might hear them.

She nods. He holds his cock at the base, and she lowers herself onto it, exhaling through the slight pinch of pain as she adjusts. She stays still on top of him, her turn to press her forehead onto his shoulder. He rubs her back, seemingly with the patience of a saint, as if it's all about her and he has no personal stake in this, even though he does. He should write a book on modern chivalry. As much as she knows she has to move, has to get the show on the road, she wishes she could stay like this forever, poised at the beginning of something so much bigger than it seems right now, rather than the end of it. Full, rather than empty. Loved, strangely, by a stranger.

Once she starts moving, it’s easier than she expected. It’s all familiar, even in its newness, the way Bellamy’s muscles tense under her hands, his breath and moans, the thrill and urgency and sensation of rushing forward as fast as they can go. He licks the pad of his thumb and circles it over her clit. She presses her lips together to keep herself quiet, in case there are groundskeepers or police or ghosts afoot.

“You first,” he says, and she gives a little nod, concentrates, even though it’s hard, with the threat of hitting her head against the ceiling, and a steering wheel at her back — why didn’t they move to the other side? — but she’s a star at coming while on top, and it doesn’t take long before she catches hold of the feeling, rides it up and up.

She grabs his hair in one hand, his shirt in the other, and muffles her shout against his throat. She thinks he’s saying something about how hot that was, how beautiful she is, how he wants to make her come again and again. But no, now it’s his turn. So she kisses him hard and fucks him harder, and it takes him all of ten seconds before he holds her hips down, presses his head to her chest, his breath stopped. She can feel his cock widen and shudder inside her. And then, silence. Stillness. Both of them spent, and — for her anyway — finally feeling the effects of staying up all night.

 

* * *

 

“You were right,” Bellamy says, mouth full of Kit-Kat. “The candy and Gatorade was a good idea.”

Over the horizon, the sun is beginning to rise. They had parked, unknowingly, in front of a wide lake overlooking an empty field. The sky is still mostly black, but rapidly it lightens into pink and orange. The windows are down and bringing in the cool morning breeze. They have the stereo on low, playing whatever Bellamy put on, something bluesy, with trumpets and bass. Her head is on his shoulder. They’re both dressed in case they have to make a quick escape, and she’s back in his jacket, but plans to let him keep her underwear as a parting gift, in case they never see each other again.

“Hey, it’s almost six,” she says. “Want to get breakfast?”

 

* * *

 

They’re the first ones in the Hasty Tasty, a diner with brown torn-up booths and formica tabletops, wood paneling on the walls under dozens of old license plates. They take a seat at a booth. The sun is up now. They’re both a mess, definitely not fit for public consumption — Clarke, covered in hickeys, makeup melted down her face, the threat of a hangover headache pulsing at her temples; Bellamy, a scratch mark down his neck and arm (when did she do that?), hair a mess, deep circles under his eyes. In the light of day, their night together has suddenly become very real.

A server floats by without saying good morning and fills both their coffee cups. They both silently peruse the menu, and when she returns to take their order, Clarke says, “A short stack, hash browns, and a side of bacon, extra crispy.”

Bellamy gives her a look. “Did I tell you that?”

“No? That’s what I always order.”

“That’s what _I_ always order.”

“I think we’ve been spending too much time together,” Clarke says.

The server scrawls it down and says, “Two short stacks, two hash browns, two sides of bacon, extra crispy” and trudges away.

“It might be the sleep deprivation talking, but I feel like we might be onto something,” Bellamy says.

“I think you’re right.”

 

* * *

 

By the time they finish breakfast, it’s going on eight. They’ve spent twelve hours together. Clarke guides him back to her house, which is a sadly short drive. She can’t bear the thought of the night ending, of moving away from whatever magic the world has offered them in finding each other. Then again, she thinks, maybe she should be better at letting go.

He parks out front and says, “Nice house." It's a big white colonial that Clarke grew up in but somehow feels no connection to. 

"Thanks," she says. "We picked it out from a catalog."

"I’ll walk you to your door.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

So he does, and they hold hands on the way. He was right about the heat wave; it's already sweltering. She left his jacket in the truck. They reach the house, and she steps onto the first step of her front stoop so they’re the same height. He takes her by the chin and kisses her. Unlike the others, this one is solemn, full of an indescribable trepidation, a million questions neither of them can ask, and answers they’re not ready to speak.

When he pulls away, he asks, “When can I see you again?” He looks afraid, like she might tell him she doesn’t want to, or that it’s too soon, or they should take it slow, some other excuse that says she's not interested. She doesn't know how he can have doubts after the night they've had, but it only emboldens her further, to prove to him how excited she is for what's to come.

“Once I get a few hours of sleep, maybe,” she says. “I’ll text you when I wake up. Maybe we can get dinner tomorrow. Or today, I guess.”

The answer seems to settle him. He smiles directly at her for the first time all night, with his teeth even, not ducking his head or turning away.

“Sleep well,” he says, walking backward, his hand still in hers, until he’s far enough that they have to let go.

“You too.”

Finally he turns toward his truck. She tracks his sloping gait, the line of his back, watches him climb in and turn the ignition. He doesn’t drive off, though, and she realizes he’s waiting for her to get safely inside, so she pulls her house key out of her purse, and slides it into the lock.

**Author's Note:**

> Bless aerialiste for a quick beta. 
> 
> I'm on tumblr, twitter, and dreamwidth as bettsfic.
> 
> If you enjoyed this fic, [you can reblog the post here](https://bettsfic.tumblr.com/post/181237615282/after-hours-an-epic-twelve-hour-first-date-that).


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